Page 70 of A Lord Apart (The Way to a Lord's Heart 2)

She blinked. He’d made it worse. “I need you,” Daniel blurted out. And clamped his teeth on the last of the phrase. He hadn’t meant to say that. All at once, he felt exposed. People hurt you the most when you admitted this.

Penelope felt a pang. Her guest sounded wounded. There was no mistaking the set of his lips, the flicker in his brown eyes. The desire to comfort him was nearly overpowering. “You must see that I cannot—”

“Cannot?”

She very nearly said, “Spend more time with you when I can’t have you.” The words jostled in her brain, tangled on her tongue.

Whitfield stepped closer.

She would have so enjoyed setting that mass of paper in order. Sorting it had been a deeply satisfying process. But Frithgerd was none of her business. Lord Whitfield’s engrained, rather endearing inefficiency was not her affair. The longer she held on, the harder it would be when all was ended by, for example, the arrival of a lovely new viscountess in those chambers she’d frequented. But the concern in his eyes—and something that looked very like tenderness—was too much. “All right,” she heard herself say.

He leaned closer. “All right?”

“I did say I would help you. With the records.”

The relief flooding his expression was nearly palpable. “You did.”

“So I…I will.”

He smiled. “Splendid. Wonderful.”

He looked so very glad, as if her agreement had filled him with joy. Elation flooded Penelope. She couldn’t help it. Perhaps a fleeting pleasure was better than none at all?

“But I mustn’t—”

Whitfield was interrupted by a chorus of barking behind the cottage, followed by shouts and then a metallic clatter. Penelope turned automatically toward the window, but she couldn’t see the barn from where she stood.

“What the deuce?” her guest said.

She needed to ask him what it was he mustn’t do. But the barking intensified. So did the shouting. He started toward the door, and she followed.

They found Jip and Jum poised before the entrance to the barn, hackles raised, voicing defiance. A few feet away, Kitty was toe-to-toe with a boy, trying to wrest a large stick from his hands. An overturned basket spilled eggs at their feet.

After a moment, Penelope recognized the boy as the goatherd Sam Jensen. Which was a puzzle. She’d thought the goat problem was solved. The flock had returned several times after the dogs’ arrival and been chased away. It was some time since they’d appeared. So what was Sam doing here?

Whitfield went over and took hold of the stick, pulling it away from them. “What is all this?” he said.

“He was going to hit Jip and Jum,” replied Kitty indignantly.

“I come to get the goat they stole away.”

“Stole?” said Penelope and her visitor at the same moment.

Penelope turned to the hounds and said, “Quiet!” Heeding the voice of authority, the dogs stopped barking. They continued to eye Sam Jensen balefully, however. “Sit,” said Penelope. They did so.

“We don’t come in your garden no more,” the goatherd said. “Nor on your property at all. But we have to pass by sometimes.” He sounded aggrieved.

“Don’t see why,” said Kitty.

“There ain’t no other way to go,” replied Sam. “And your dogs got no call to give me the evil eye. When I got back to the farm yesterday and found I was a goat short, I knew they’d took it.”

“More likely you lost it,” said Kitty.

“I looked everywhere!”

“Couldn’t have.”

“I did! All the places we went. And why are they so keen to keep me out of the barn?”

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